How to seize a vacant lot and give it life

Communities are turning eyesores into gardens and more

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Vacant lots and empty buildings have become commonplace since the economic downturn and housing crash. The hope is that when the economy gets back to full strength, many of these spaces will be granted a new life, due to increased investment.

But if you have to look at one of these vacant places every day, you may be getting impatient. You may decide to take matters into your own hands.

And that can be a good thing.

Just consider the story of one lot in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. It sat vacant for 30 years. At one point prior to those three decades, it may have been a laundry. Until 2009, it was a field of weeds.

Today, the lot is known as Altgeld Sawyer Corner Farm, built and maintained by a team of neighbors, and it has an ambitious, three-part mission.

Corner Farm Chicago

“One is to create open green space in Logan Square, which has the second lowest amount of green space per capita in Chicago,” said Brie Callahan, spokeswoman for the project. “And then we’re also a food pantry farm,” serving the nearby Christopher House, a nonprofit that helps at-risk children and their families. Parents and kids who receive assistance through Christopher House also volunteer in the garden, she said

“The third part of our mission is cultivating community. The best way to grow a neighborhood and develop close ties is to work shoulder-to-shoulder,” she said.

For its efforts, the farm recently won a people’s choice award in the Metropolitan Planning Council’s Space in Between contest. The MPC is a Chicago-area organization with a goal of developing, promoting and implementing solutions for sound regional growth in the region, which includes not only Chicago but Milwaukee, Wis., and Gary, Ind.

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Other winners included the Metcalfe Park Community Action Team of Milwaukee, which took over an empty lot and boarded-up building in an area where vacant properties were prevalent. The group organized a drive-in movie night on the lot and used the building for an art installation by a local artist.

In Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood, the group Demoiselle 2 Femme won for transforming a vacant lot into an innovative playground called Climb, Jump, Leap and Imagine!

These projects are also examples of a growing trend of “tactical urbanism,” said John Norquist, president of the Congress for New Urbanism, a group that promotes walkable, mixed-use neighborhood development and sustainable communities. Tactical urbanism is a movement that encourages a community to take vacant space and do something with it to serve the neighborhood, he said.

“It’s a healthy trend, it’s a good trend,” Norquist said. “It shows local initiative and self-reliance and [that] people in the neighborhoods are taking action themselves.”

What’s more, it helps get projects moving even when funds are limited, said Marisa Novara, project manager for MPC.

“It puts people in a rather passive position, when you’re waiting for the market to return or waiting for the lenders to lend again,” she said. Through creativity, people can act on their own in the meantime, and their projects can send a loud message about what the community needs.

In the case of the Corner Farm, the owner is known; he lives in the community and the garden grows on his lot with his blessing, Callahan said. But in some cases, people are enhancing lots or developing programs in spaces where the owner is unknown — and they have to be prepared to uproot what they’ve built if the owner returns to take care of the property, Novara said.

It’s not only vacant lots that are getting makeovers, either.

“There were two entries [in the contest] in former Borders bookstores,” Novara said. In both the Chicago suburb of Evanston and in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, the big box stores were used for community programming for a weekend or longer, she said.

This communal spirit is gaining ground in other cities, as well.

Examples include a vacant block in Portland, Ore., that has been repurposed as a place for food vendors to set up shop, Norquist said.

And when Denver’s Union Station underwent redevelopment, the city asked artists for ideas to beautify construction fences surrounding the site, Novara said. In response, knitters decorated the fencing with crocheted flowers, butterflies and ladybugs that actually drew tourists.

It’s all about taking spaces that are underused and turning them into something beautiful, Callahan said. In the meantime, there’s another important byproduct: The projects can bring neighbors closer together.

“I think that the recession and the crash was a big wake-up call to folks,” she said. “We’ve seen a real extension of community.”

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